Materials Informatics for Dark Matter Detection

TL;DR

This paper proposes using materials informatics to identify small-gap Dirac materials as potential sensors for detecting light WIMP dark matter particles, enabling rapid screening of candidate materials.

Contribution

It introduces a novel informatics-based approach to rapidly identify small-gap and Dirac materials suitable for dark matter detection sensors.

Findings

Identified organic small-gap semiconductors BNQ-TTF and DEBTTT.

Found Dirac-line semimetal (BEDT-TTF)·Br with a tiny gap of ~50 meV.

Outlined a rapid screening strategy for dark matter sensor materials.

Abstract

Dark Matter particles are commonly assumed to be weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with a mass in the GeV to TeV range. However, recent interest has shifted towards lighter WIMPs, which are more difficult to probe experimentally. A detection of sub-GeV WIMPs would require the use of small gap materials in sensors. Using recent estimates of the WIMP mass, we identify the relevant target space towards small gap materials (100-10 meV). Dirac Materials, a class of small- or zero-gap materials, emerge as natural candidates for sensors for Dark Matter detection. We propose the use of informatics tools to rapidly assay materials band structures to search for small gap semiconductors and semimetals, rather than focusing on a few preselected compounds. As a specific example of the proposed strategy, we use the organic materials database (omdb.diracmaterials.org) to identify organic candidates for sensors: the narrow band gap semiconductors BNQ-TTF and DEBTTT with gaps of 40 and 38 meV, and the Dirac-line semimetal (BEDT-TTF)$\cdot$Br which exhibits a tiny gap of $\approx$ 50 meV when spin-orbit coupling is included. We outline a novel and powerful approach to search for dark matter detection sensor materials by means of a rapid assay of materials using informatics tools.